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On Being a Woman a friend of mine was asked to write about being a femme for a queer womens event she wasnt quite sure where to begin its hard to write about being a girl, she said and i knew exactly what she meant for some time ive been trying to write my own poem about what it means to be a woman but every time i pick up my pen im afraid that ill paint myself into a corner betrayed by words forged from soft vowel sounds and weak, diminutive connotations words so delicate that they crumple under any further introspection im afraid that i may lose a part of myself as i navigate my way through the landmines of other peoples definitions and dogma pop-culture tells us that a real woman knows how to use her body to get what she wants wielding the power of attraction seducing with her animal magnetism but i ask how much power is there in being a carrot on a stick that is dangled in front of someone? and i cant help but notice that when men try to flatter us they often use words like "enchanting" and "mysterious" but to me, those words seem like a subconscious attempt by them to place some distance between us so it bothers me when i hear women buy into a similar mysticism as they try to empower us by proclaiming that we are magical that we are mother earth with the ability to give birth bearing life cycles that follow the moon like the tides of the ocean but dont they see the danger in buying into the idea that we are supernatural beings for if we call ourselves goddesses then there is no need for anyone to treat us like human beings i believe that this is where second wave feminism came to a grinding halt when we got caught up in the myth that women are special because of our biology because when we take pride in how fundamentally different we are from men we unknowingly engage in a dangerous game of opposites for if men are big then women must be small if men are strong then women must be soft and it becomes impossible to write a loud and proud poem about what it means to be a woman without either ridiculing men or else pulling the rug out from under ourselves and being a woman is contradiction enough without being both a transsexual and a dyke like myself i often feel like the monkey in the middle on one side of me are lesbian separatists who insist that i am still a man as if being born male was some awful disease that has infected my blood and my bones permanently on the other side of me are younger dykes who are infatuated with trans men and trannybois yet secretly confess to friends that they are disturbed by trans women because we act so effeminate i wonder how they can be so oblivious to their own arrogance for anyone who admires trans-men but dismisses trans-women is simply practicing another form of sexism i used to think it was a contradiction that some dykes abhorred me for my masculinity while others hated me for my femininity until i realized that being a woman means that everyone has a stake in seeing what they want to see in me my friend said its hard to write about being a girl i believe thats because the word girl doesnt really have a meaning of its own it is always defined in opposition to boy so when being butch is to make yourself rock solid then being femme becomes allowing yourself to be malleable and if being a man means taking control of your own situation then being a woman becomes living up to other peoples expectations well i refuse to believe in this myth of opposites if we want to shatter the glass ceiling we must first learn to move beyond biology and give ourselves permission to become anything we want to be i say to set any standard that all women must meet is to commit an act of misogyny i refuse to believe in the myth that all women share a common bond the truth is we are all very different from one another we each live with a different set of privileges and life experiences and once we acknowledge this fact it will become obvious that when we try to place all women into the same box we unintentionally suffocate ourselves instead of pretending that all women share the same experience that we are one in the same lets make the word woman a perpetual agent of change instead of repeating history by chaining ourselves to one specific definition or concept lets make the word woman a celebration of each of our uniqueness. |